What ASO is (and isn't)
ASO is ongoing work on a store listing's metadata, creative, reviews and relevance, helping the intended audience find the app and decide whether to install it.
The six discovery surfaces
App Store search, Apple Intelligence and Siri, Google Play search, Play collections, AI assistants and web-to-app journeys each interpret the listing differently. Classic ASO covers only part of that discovery system.
The keyword universe
Start from Apple Search Ads impression reports, competitor teardowns, review-mining, and panel data (AppTweak, Sensor Tower, Mobile Action). Score every candidate on difficulty × volume × intent. Map to specific fields, never dump. See our Keyword Strategy page for the field-level cadence.
Metadata as training data
As Apple has expanded AI-generated tags, description phrasing has become machine-readable input. Use capability-clear language, entity-clean naming, feature phrasing machines can lift. This is the new discipline: our AI Discovery page covers it in depth.
The conversion surface
Screenshots and the icon are often the strongest conversion surfaces. Test them with Apple Product Page Optimisation and Google Play Store Listing Experiments, using a pre-agreed significance threshold. Custom Product Pages can map distinct variants to paid campaigns.
Reviews as evidence
Reviews are the trust gate for conversion and the evidence layer AI assistants read when naming apps. Respond fast. Time in-app prompts. Recover ratings after a bad release cycle.
AI Discovery, added
The new leg. Recommendation audits, AI-tag engineering, capability evidence, assistant answer optimisation, and monthly Share of Recommendation tracking. See the AI Discovery practice page.
Measurement + reporting
Track keyword ranks, category ranks, impressions → page views → installs, and Share of Recommendation. Report monthly. Every figure with a source or a model flag.
Cadence
The operating schedule includes weekly rank tracking, fortnightly tests, monthly metadata reviews, quarterly description updates and an annual positioning review.